A secret witness who injected morphine into a man killed by hammer blows to the head has had her identity permanently suppressed.
The woman was the Crown's sole eyewitness to the killing of Dean Browne, 38, in a Wellington flat on 21 January last year.
She admits injecting Mr Browne with a potentially lethal dose of morphine to ease his pain, but was not charged over his death.
The defence argued that she was the real killer, but on Wednesday
her friends Mikhail Pandey-Johnson, 24, and Karl Nuku, 19, were found guilty of murder.
At the New Plymouth High Court on Thursday, Justice Woolford made permanent her name suppression, saying the convictions do not erase the public portrayal of the witness as a murderer.
The judge says affidavits from the woman, her mother, her doctor and a clinical psychologist point to significant health issues.
Pandey-Johnson and Nuku will be sentenced on 29 July.
